My story is positive. So much good has come out of it

‘I’m one of the lucky ones and I have so many reasons to be thankful’

THE hush was ghastly. Seldom, if ever, has a congregation of 35,000 people made so little noise away from a dedicated minute’s silence.

As the penny dropped that Fabrice Muamba’s collapse off the ball was a life-or-death emergency, the suspense tore at the soul.

Bolton Wanderers’ travelling fans momentarily broke the pall of silence by chanting Muamba’s name.

For those of us who had been at White Hart Lane 21 years earlier, when super-middleweight boxer Michael Watson was evacuated on a stretcher with his life in the balance, the same sense of dread fell.

Bolton were relegated at the end of the season, and their tailspin down three flights of stairs was a trauma in itself, but Muamba’s miraculous recovery was their best result this century. Or probably ever.

Despite his heart stopping for 78 minutes, Muamba’s life was saved by a coalition of doctors, paramedics and Tottenham fan Dr Andrew Deaner, a consultant at the London Chest Hospital, who was at the game with his brothers. When Deaner rushed down from his seat to help, two jobsworths initially thwarted his efforts to reach the stricken midfielder, but a senior steward stood aside when he realised he was obstructing an eminent cardiologist.

Repeated CPR and 15 defibrillator shocks later – two on the pitch, one in the tunnel and 12 more on the ambulance dash to hospital – Muamba was eventually resuscitated. He is not just a poster boy for the British Heart Foundation’s inspired Every Minute Counts campaign, which aims to train 270,000 people how to perform CPR over the next 12 months – with 23,000 signing up in the first week alone.

He is the reference point for saving victims of cardiac arrest in football and beyond. Muamba is chuffed Bolton will be at Wembley for the League One play-off final against Oxford next weekend. “Bolton Wanderers will always be in my heart and seeing them walk out at Wembley for one last push will be amazing,” he said. “It’s strange to think that, when I played my last game for them, Bolton was a Premier League club and they fell through all the divisions.

“But they are on the way back – hopefully they will have the funds to bring in players to handle the step up to another level. You need a very good squad to compete, but Ipswich have shown it is possible to assemble a team that can go all the way to the Premier League. Kieran McKenna has done an incredible job.”

Muamba had got engaged just four weeks before his 999 drama at White Hart Lane. Now working at Burnley as an academy coach, primarily with the under-15s, he is a family man with four children.

He said: “It’s a positive story because so much good has come out of it. Too many people have lost loved ones because there was nobody to administer CPR or use a defibrillator when they needed it. I’m one of the lucky ones and I have so many reasons to be thankful.

“People ask me if I remember anything about that night – yes, I missed a great chance to score.

“I can almost piece together what happened based on different people telling me their experience.

“To be here 12 years later, having a conversation about it, is pretty cool. As a player, you are under pressure to perform, but for those guys who saved my life, they were under unbelievable pressure to deliver.

“When I spoke to Jonathan Tobin, the Bolton club doctor, I said, ‘You must have been terrified,’ and he told me, ‘Faba, I was scared, we had to get it right’ – I am so grateful to all the people who did their jobs with 35,000 people watching.” Muamba found it difficult to come to terms with his playing career being finished at 23 after having a pacemaker fitted.

It was only when he travelled to Belgium for a second opinion from one of the world’s leading heart doctors that he was told: “If you go back to playing, you are running to your grave.” Muamba, now 36, said: “Until then, I just wanted one person to say I could get back to playing. That would have given me hope.

“Retirement was such a bitter pill to swallow, but now I can look back and realise I lived my dream of playing in the Premier League.”

▮„ Every Minute Counts: To learn CPR in 15 minutes with the British Heart Foundation’s RevivR online tool, go to www.bhf.org.uk and click on Learn CPR link.